Brightmoon end of year quiz – answers!

I hope you had fun with the quiz. Here are all the answers. Any comments, objections, mistakes, etc – please feel free to post a comment or to email me.

1) The Plains of Kallanash

Question 1: What was Dethin’s job when Mia first met him?

1. A) Blacksmith
2. B) Commander of First Section
3. C) Eastern Warlord
4. D) Skirmisher

Answer: C) Dethin was the Eastern Warlord, with power of command over several individual sections. Bulraney was the deeply unpleasant character who was Commander of First Section when Mia first arrived there. Hurst and his companions were Skirmishers.

Question 2: When Mia and Hurst climbed to the top of the tower in the lake at the Ring, what did they find there? (Bonus points if you can name everything they found along the way)

1. A) The Silent Guards
2. B) The Nine Gods
3. C) Mages
4. D) All of the above

Answer: D) They found all of those, of course. On the way up the tower, they also found rooms full of books (had they come from the neglected library?), some enslaved kitchen workers and a lot of empty rooms.

Question 3: When Mia met the morodaim in the tunnel, they bowed very respectfully to her. Why?

1. A) She was the only female.
2. B) They’d met her before.
3. C) They recognised her mental ability to read emotions.
4. D) They are magical creatures; who knows why they do anything?

Answer: C) The morodaim are very attuned to those with magical ability, since they were created by the dragons to keep their nests and tunnels clean, and look after their eggs. However, half a point if you answered D! Magic is always ineffable.

2) The Fire Mages

Question 1: When Drei first met Kyra, he was instantly attracted to her. Why?

1. A) He thought she was someone important.
2. B) He recognised the aura of her power.
3. C) He liked red-haired girls.
4. D) She looked like his mother.

Answer: B) Kyra’s power at the time was so much greater than Drei’s that he could see her aura even though she couldn’t see his. After the renewal, when her magical energy had been ‘topped up’ to its maximum point by the power in the pillar, Drei was almost dazzled by it. Later, when Drei had learned how to increase his own power from the pillar, their powers were of similar strength.

Question 2: In Bennamore, how do you activate a spell?

1. A) Burn it.
2. B) Chant a prayer to the gods.
3. C) Say the words.
4. D) Write a spellpage.

Answer: all of these. A trick question – sorry! Typically, a scribe writes a spellpage, and then burns it in a crucible while reciting the incantation ‘By the sun, bring light and fire and colour; by the moon, enable the darkness’. A mage can also say the words of the spell using magical power drawn directly from a vessel, and thought mages like Cal don’t even need to say the words aloud. Kyra was her own vessel (or reservoir of magical power) so she could make things happen even without words. Bennamore is the only place where spellpages are used, and the only place where magic can be used by someone without any innate magical ability.

Question 3: In the library at the Imperial City, there is a giant stone ball with magical powers. How do you activate it and what does it do?

1. A) Spin it while standing on one leg and it will explode.
2. B) Pour water over it, and it lights up.
3. C) Ask it any question and it will answer.
4. D) Say some words while touching it with both hands, and it will give you the power to understand the languages of the time the city was built.

Answer: D) It’s a translation device. Touching it with both hands fires it up, and when you then say some words in your own language, it connects to your own language well enough to give you the power to understand the major old languages. It was left there by the pre-catastrophe mages so that future generations would always be able to read the books in the library. I don’t suppose the stone needed to be so big, but that was just the mages showing off, I expect.

3) The Mages of Bennamore

Question 1: What is Fen’s occupation at the start of the book?

1. A) Speaker
2. B) Holder
3. C) Inn keeper
4. D) Recorder

Answer: D) Fen was a Recorder, someone who recorded all transactions by a business to ensure they were lawful and the correct taxes were paid. She ended up as the Speaker, a new role designed to speak for all the Port Holdings in their dealings with Bennamore.

Question 2: When Fen, Mal and Hestaria climbed to the top of the magical tower, what could they see through the windows?

1. A) The views from other towers around the continent.
2. B) Dristomar, the town they were in.
3. C) Kingswell, the capital of Bennamore.
4. D) Shannamar, Fen’s home town.

Answer: A and B The tower shows its own surroundings (Dristomar), but also connects to the other towers around the continent. For those who’ve read ‘The Dragon’s Egg’, the great city that most interests Fen here is in fact Drakk’alona. That tower is the only one to have been entered previously, and the source of the glass balls in use in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’.

Question 3: What power does Fen’s magical glass ball have?

1. A) It can heal.
2. B) It makes her invisible.
3. C) It gives her the ability to see and hear events elsewhere.
4. D) It can obey her commands.

Answer: A, C and D The only one of these it can’t do is to make her invisible (which is impossible in the Brightmoon world). It allows her to see and hear through other glass balls, she used it to heal Mal when he was stabbed by Tella in the tunnel, and when she confronted the approaching Bennamorian army and asked it to protect her, it did. It’s a very powerful kind of vessel, like those used in Bennamorian magic, which contains magic to be activated by the will of its mind-bonded owner. The glass balls were left behind by the pre-catastrophe mages to give mage-level power to those with the right level of innate magical ability. Fen was selected by her ball in the tower, and Dru (in ‘The Dragon’s Egg’) was also able to use her ball fully, but for those with lesser ability, they were merely communication devices or used to identify types of magical ability or to show when someone was lying.

4) The Magic Mines of Asharim

Question 1: Zak has a tattoo on one arm. What does it depict? Bonus points if you can remember what it represents.

1. A) An anchor.
2. B) His lover’s name.
3. C) A snake.
4. D) A lion.

Answer: C) It’s a snake, and it means that he is a committed member of the organisation trying to restore the Akk’asharan Empire.

Question 2: What did Allandra and Xando find in the tunnels behind the mines?

1. A) A pool of blue water.
2. B) An abandoned town.
3. C) A cache of dragon’s eggs.
4. D) Morodaim.

Answer: All of these. The blue pool (a ‘Pool of Transformation’, according to Dru in ‘The Dragon’s Egg’) lies just beyond the flicker cavern. There are several pools, and several towns (refuges) around the mountain, and Allandra and Xando found themselves in a deserted town that had become completely encased in rock. At the centre of the mountain was the ‘nest’ of eggs, although they were the work of mages, not dragons. The morodaim led Allandra and Xando to safety.

Question 3: How did Allandra and Zak divert water to Mesanthia?

1. A) They made it rain enough that the lake overflowed.
2. B) They summoned an earthquake to break the wall of the lake.
3. C) Zak used his water magic to move the water.
4. D) None of these.

Answer: D) They tried using flickers to shift the cascade of fallen rock, and they tried using fire and water magic to push through, but none of that worked. However, they had done enough damage that a naturally occurring earthquake opened up a gap in the lake wall.

5) The Fire Mages’ Daughter

Question 1: Drina discovers she can mind-bond with different types of creatures, but which ones?

1. A) Rats.
2. B) Eagles.
3. C) Horses.
4. D) All of these.

Answer: A) and B) The rats are the first creatures she connects with, then later there’s a bear and an eagle. Horses, for some reason, don’t bond through Blood Clan magic, which only connect with predatory beasts. Dethin, on the other hand, in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, could see into the minds of any animal, although without the ability to bond with any of them.

Question 2: What is Drina’s unique magical capability?

1. A) She can control fire.
2. B) She can mind-bond with a giant eagle.
3. C) She can affect people’s dreams.
4. D) She can draw magic into herself from other people or objects.

Answer: D) Because she is addicted to magic and has a continuing need for it, she is able to pull sources of magic into herself. Although she can mind-bond with eagles, that comes from Ly-haam’s blood magic, which many of the Blood Clans have, and it’s not a unique ability. It’s her mother, Kyra, who can control fire.

Question 3: When an assassin sneaked into the Keep at night to murder Drina, what saved her?

1. A) Arran killed the assassin.
2. B) Drina’s eagle killed the assassin.
3. C) The guards killed the assassin.
4. D) Drina’s magic killed the assassin.

Answer: C). Drina’s eagle, who slept on the roof of the Keep, first alerted her to the presence of the assassin. Arran, who kept a sword handy, even in the bedroom (what a well-trained bodyguard!), defended her, but was injured. The guards rushed in and finished off the assassin.

6) The Dragon’s Egg

Question 1: How did Garrett get himself and his friends off the slaver’s ship?

1. A) They stole a small boat and rowed ashore at night.
2. B) They jumped overboard.
3. C) He gambled with the slaver and won their freedom.
4. D) He killed the slaver.

Answer: mostly C). He gambled, and, using his ability to see through the eyes of others, he would normally have won. However, the slaver had a magical ability, too, to change the pictures on the ‘flats’ (wooden cards), and when Garrett challenged him over it, he agreed to let them go.

Question 2: Why did Dru want to find a Keeper?

1. A) So she could be safely locked away, to protect the world from her magic.
2. B) So she could learn how to use her magical powers.
3. C) To learn the history of the world.
4. D) No one knows.

Answer: strictly speaking D) but there is an element of truth in all the others. The Keepers were established as the repositories of all the pre-catastrophe knowledge, including the truth about the mages, and how they controlled their powers. ‘Egg people’ like Dru were not supposed to be out in the world discovering what they could do randomly. They were intended to be kept well away from the normal population until they had learned everything they needed to know about the world, had ‘transformed’ into mages and had then learned how to use their powers.

Question 3: What happened in the end to Hanni, the Tre’annatha who escorted Garrett and Dru from Drakk’alona to Mesanthia and then to the flicker mine in the mountain?

1. A) Garrett killed her with a crossbow.
2. B) She fell into the blue pool.
3. C) She was turned into a morodaim.
4. D) Dru killed her with magical fire.

Answer: B and C. She tried to steal the magical globe from Dru, and as they fought, they both fell into the Pool of Transformation (the blue pool). Dru had strong magical powers, so she was transformed into a mage. Hanni had no magical power so she became a morodaim. You can probably remember who Garrett shot with his crossbow.

7) The Second God

Question 1: Why was Trimon, the leader of the Golden Army, called the Dragon God (amongst other things).

1. A) He turned into a dragon when the moon was full.
2. B) He had defeated a dragon in combat.
3. C) He rode on a dragon.
4. D) None of these.

Answer: B) This is a bit of a cheat, because the answer was in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, so if you answered ‘I don’t know’, give yourself a point anyway. The dragon Trimon defeated wasn’t exactly a real dragon, either, so if you said D), you can have half a point. When the Skirmishers took up arms against the temple in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, the Silent Guard summoned a magical dragon illusion. It looked real enough to everyone else, but Trimon had a connection to wind and saw the dragon for the ephemeral thing it was. So he made the wind disperse, the dragon vanished, the prophecy was fulfilled and the Silent Guard bowed down to their Dragon God.

Question 2: Trimon left a message for Drina outside the gates of the town of Greenstone Ford. How did she retrieve it without being spotted by the guards?

1. A) She flew in on her eagle.
2. B) She rode a lion at night.
3. C) She made herself invisible.
4. D) She had Arran create a diversion on the other side of the town.

Answer: B) Kalmander (Arran’s eagle, who had night vision) flew her across the river from the Bennamorian watchpost, and then she rode a lion, mentally controlled by Ly-haam, to retrieve the message. On the way back she encountered four Vahsi, watching the movements of Trimon’s Golden Army, but Ly told her the words to reassure them that she was friendly (the Blood Clans originated as Vahsi, and the two languages are almost the same).

Question 3: Five groups were involved in the final battle against Trimon’s Golden Army. Can you name them all?

Answer: The Defenders of the Port Holdings; the Bennamorians; the Blood Clans; the Icthari; the Vahsi.

8) Bonus question:

When the mages accidentally triggered the catastrophic collision of the continents and realised that only their own deaths would prevent the end of the world, they set about trying to find ways to allow powerful magic to continue after the upheaval had settled down. How many ways can you think of?

Answers:

1) They turned nine mages into stone, to be revived later, which worked except that they had lost their memories. (From ‘The Plains of Kallanash’)

2) They turned magic into a physical form, seeded in the soil, powered by the sun through giant pillars, and invoked by written or spoken spells (the spellpages of Bennamore). Once invoked, the magic returned to the soil to be reused. It could also be stored for later use in paper, ink and quills (to write spellpages) or in vessels (to be used by those with innate power – mages). (From ‘The Fire Mages’, ‘The Fire Mages’ Daughter’ and ‘The Second God’)

3) They created glass balls containing a magical source and the ability to bond with human minds. They acted as scrying stones, as lie detectors and as detectors of strong magical power. Those with the power to bond with them could call upon the magic within them and use them however they wished. (First seen in ‘The Mages of Bennamore’)

4) They created egg people, artificially developed mages contained in eggs, to be released by intense fire. They also put artificial blue pools and morodaim to look after the eggs, flickers to defend them against any hostile threat from outside and human Keepers in refuges to help train the egg-mages after they are released. It was just a pity that the humans forgot what they were there for and abandoned the refuges and the eggs. (First seen in ‘The Magic Mines of Asharim’)

5) They invented a way to combine mage powers using blood magic. This was originally bestowed on the Keepers, but the Blood Clans use a corrupted form of the same blood magic in a different way. (First seen in ‘The Magic Mines of Asharim’)

No doubt there are other ways, still to be discovered, and humans also have innate magical capabilities (connections).